What does effective Dry Practice actually look like?

#fridayfundamentals

Since many people have never seen a structured Dry Practice session, here’s an example.

This session uses a State’s (Louisiana) Concealed Handgun Permit Qualification Course as the basis for structuring the session. Having a structured Dry Practice session accomplishes several objectives. Among them are safety, avoiding “grabasstic gun clicking,” and effective time management, among others.

Although the session seems simplistic, the way it is structured provides multiple repetitions of at least 10 different skills that are common in Defensive Gun Uses. In his groundbreaking book How to Win Friends and Influence People, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003WEAI4E/ Dale Carnegie wrote,

“Remember that the use of these principles can be made habitual only by a constant and vigorous campaign of review and application.”

Those words are every bit as true for physical skills as they are for human relations skills. The way we learn to do things competently by practicing them repetitively. As an aside, human relation skills can be very useful in defusing bad situations and Carnegie’s book is well worth reading for general interest.

Skills practiced in the session

• 36 Good First Round Hits.
  • Good, for my purposes, means creating a serious enough wound that the shootee has to go to a hospital to seek medical treatment. At that point, the POlice will start asking those uncomfortable questions about how he got the wound. More about that definition in the next #mindsetmonday.
  • There are several subsets of getting ‘Good First Round Hits’.
    • 36 Presentations into the Eye-Target line
    • 36 Sight Acquisitions
    • 36 Smooth enough trigger presses
    • 36 Follow-throughs
• 33 repetitions of Forming the Grip quickly
• 36 repetitions of Racking the slide in a safe (muzzle downrange) manner.
• 3 Draws to Ready
  • 3 ‘Draw but DON’T SHOOT YET’ Decisions
• 3 Safe Re-holsters
• 33 repetitions of Return to Ready
• 3 magazine exchanges
  • 1 Reload with Retention
  • 2 Tactical Reloads
• 36 Deliberate SHOOT Decisions
• 36 Shot Analyses (Read the Sights)
• 3 Spatial Analyses (6 feet is in the Close Phase of Social space, 10 feet is in the Far Phase of Social space, and 15 feet is in the Close Phase of Public space) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxemics and how they affect your shooting.

Start each repetition aimed below and to the side of the target.

The TRT (Tap-Rack-Training aid) mentioned is available on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Pack-Safety-Training-Pistol-Magazine/dp/B07CNBDHSB Using it is much easier the making the UN (inert and doesn’t work) magazines that were its inspiration.

Image Based Decisional Drills https://www.imagebaseddecisionaldrills.com/ provided the face on the target. A face is available for download in the Downloadables section of their website.

Using a Qualification Course as the basis for a Dry Practice Session and Regimen is an effective way of maximizing the value of your effort. For those who plan to obtain a Weapons Carry License in a State that has a Qualification requirement, it is also useful as an introduction to the structure of pistol qualification, even if the Course used is not the same.

Today’s Patreon https://www.patreon.com/TacticalProfessor post will go into more detail about structuring Dry Practice for maximum effectiveness.

FTC note: I receive no compensation for the product links in this post.